Greening Our Cities, Greening Our Tax System

By: Jerik Cruz

This few would question: the state of Metro Manila is now a national catastrophe. Only the annual costs of carmaggedon (P1,095, based on National Economic and Development Authority P3 billion-a-day estimates,) already surpass our yearly losses from natural disasters (P206 billion) more than five times over.

Yet, our traffic ordeals are just the most garish displays of our country’s urban nightmare. All across the Philippines, untrammeled urban expansion has propelled our cities’ built and natural environments far beyond their limits. Car pollution has spiked by at least 44 percent in the last decade; land conversions have surged in Regions 3, 4-A, 6 and 10, drowning peri-urban ecosystems in unruly sprawl; disaster risks have risen to stratospheric heights, with Metro Manila now pegged by the Cambridge Center for Risk Studies in 2015 as the fourth riskiest conurbation on earth.

Gates of hell or incubators of sustainability?

Gates of hell, urban monstrosities: often the images with which we portray our urban present cast our cities with a destructive, even dystopian tinge.